I had a friendly tap on the shoulder from a few seats behind me at the last Duluth Symphony performance. (Sam Black wasn’t nearly effusive enough in his praise in his DNT review) Marci, an old ally from LDV Days wanted to say hello and kibbutz a bit about how irritated she was with ISD 709 (ISD = Independent School District)
I told her that I planned to vote for all three levels in the upcomming school board levy referendum and she was a bit scandalized. She commented how she had just discovered that the incredibly long driveway from West End up to the new Western Middle School was costing $2.1 million. Yikes!
She’s a natural Tea Partier so I wouldn’t expect Marci to support any extra School funding anyway. Her fight against the Red Plan simply adds fuel to her fire. I watched Marci interviewing Art Johnston a few weeks back about the Red Plan on Cable Public Access TV. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Art sent out an email this morning alerting his friends that he’s setting up a website, Truth in Duluth, to keep people informed about School District issues.
I will never be able to forgive Dr. Dixon’s legacy of mistrust. Had he asked voters for a referendum he might very well have lost it but he could have come back and asked for a smaller amount and been quite likely to pass it. I have yet to meet anyone in Duluth who has not acknowledged a need. That patient strategy did not suit a man of Dixon’s ego. To get what he wanted he lied through his teeth and all his School Board supporters were tacitly complicit and willingly ignorant.
I’ve been reading through Art’s website which is a compilation of what he calls myths he says are being spewed out by the School District to promote their levy referendum. In the past such myths, if that’s what they are, were Dixon’s. This time his old cabinet is having to do all the heavy lifting on their own. I suspect Art is mostly right in what he says. He’s pretty meticulous, much more so than me. I can find some things to quibble with about the information on his site but mostly I agree with it. I’m still in favor of the referendum.
Here for example is his chart to bust “Myth 1” that our spending per pupil isn’t keeping up:
I would point out that the level of spending has only creeped upwards over the past few years. Other states have been spending more. Whether their spending is on increased programs or higher paid teacher’s salary and benefits I don’t know. The latter might not really improve their educational success.
I agree with Art that “Myth 7” that the District has cut $24 million from recent budgets is greossly exaggerated, His Chart, if accurate proves it:
Art says that the District inflated its budgets unrealistically then made cuts to programs on paper to make it sound like the District’s programming was being slaughtered. To a point I agree. Then again, I think back on what was once an incredibly rich music offering which has been greatly trimmed so I’m left to conclude that Art’s criticisms don’t quite capture the whole truth.
His Chart 7d shows steady growth in Duluth’s expenditures per pupil nearly double from about $7,000 in 1997 to about $13,500 in 2011. I’d like to hear Bill Hanson explain that away. One partial explanation is that in 1997 the District was coming to the end of its old bonds which was rapidly lowering the District’s overall tax impact. It was just this fact that suggested that it was about time to start doing some serious work on schools which would require new bonds. The Red Plan probably boosted the need by three times what was necessary if the example of Edison is kept in mind.
Chart 7e is the only one I would find fault with although it is most likely quite accurate. It shows costs per child of the Duluth schools of not just operational expenses but building expenses: Take a look. It is appalling that the Red Plan’s amortized costs have trippled the cost per child for the next two decades. It is even more appalling to note that while 75% of the first third is being borne by state aid the two thirds (all new since the Red Plan) are being borne by regressive local property taxes. At least I think I’ve got that right. Maybe Dr. Dixon’s old PR person will take my analysis to Bill Hanson so he can come up with a less troubling explanation:
Frankly, its hard for me to justify my support of all three levels of increased funding after considering Art’s work but I still do. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot and I consider the levy to be a tourniquet.
Its interesting for me to think back on the 1997 levy referendum which I worked my tail off for. The teacher’s union did not publicly support it even though it was meant to enhance what we were offering our students in new art, music, math and physical education opportunities. Frank Wanner, the DFT Union President justified this refusal to support it by telling me, “What’s in it for us?” In other words if we had designated the new taxes to be spent on existing teacher’s benefits and salaries the union would gladly have supported it. Evidently they didn’t give a damn about the students…….not as long as Frank was President of the Union. Sometimes I think that not much has changed.
Not that its only the teacher’s union I’d heap abuse on. If you look at Chart 7b you will see that the only year there has been a decrease in per pupil spending was in 2002 the year after the failure of another operational levy referendum. 2001 was the year the Chamber of Commerce refused to support the levy after which we began trimming our music programs and cutting back our bussing of kids to school. It came shortly after the legislature gave huge property tax cuts to local businesses. Selfish SOBs.
Ah, but when it came to voting on the Red Plan the Chamber was happy to forgo a referendum. Money talks.
